grunt gallery is launching a new community art screen at Kingsway and Broadway in Vancouver, and we welcome your submissions! Our inaugural program, PLACE, looks at a changing Mount Pleasant through the lens of the artists and residents who live here. We are seeking videos, photography, digital artwork, and archival content that explores the neighbourhood and its history, its current vitality and its future. grunt gallery is interested in historically underrepresented voices including contemporary First Nations artists, LGBTQ2S work, outsider artists, and work from members of the Mount Pleasant community (people who live or work in the neighbourhood, or who have lived or worked here in the past).

grunt gallery was founded in 1984 in Mount Pleasant and is one of the country’s most respected artist run centres. The gallery offers public programming in the form of exhibitions, performances, discursive events, publications and special projects, with a focus on contemporary practices that challenge and problematize existing hierarchies of cultural value. grunt gallery’s mandate to inspire public dialogue by creating an environment conducive to the emergence of innovative, collaborative, and provocative contemporary art.

Deadline for submissions is MONDAY, JUNE 11, 2018

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Maximum one-page proposal for the work, describing what you wish to show, and how it relates to the theme.

Supporting Documentation: Video submissions should be sent as a link to a host site (Youtube, Vimeo). Please email us before the deadline if you prefer to send us a file.

Photography submissions: 10-12 images. Image files should be no more than 1200 pixels wide.

Artist CV and a short biography

Artist Statement (optional)

Once work is considered for the urban screen you will receive a detailed technical requirements form outlining specifications including file formats, resolution, aspect ratio, codecs, etc

grunt gallery’sMount Pleasant Community Art Screen’s inaugural exhibition PLACE
looks at a changing Mount Pleasant and Vancouver, through works that explore its
history, it current vitality and its future through the interpretations of the artists and
residents who live here.

Working with neighbourhood partners, our vision is to create and implement cultural
programming for the screen that reflects community cultural interests, and that allows for
opportunities for direct community engagement in a variety of innovative ways.Mount Pleasant was one of Vancouver’s earliest neighbourhoods; it was THE place to be
from the 1890’s until 1910, when Shaughnessy then became the new preferred
neighbourhood, and Mount Pleasant fell into decline. Mount Pleasant and Brewery Creek
lay close to the Ontario Street dividing line between east and west and Main Street
reflected this cultural and class division, with bigger homes to the west and working
class homes to the east.

Mount Pleasant’s early decline continued for almost 100 years. Its working-class roots
made it the place for rental housing and transient tenants, and it became the poorest
neighbourhood outside of the DTES. A neighbourhood of immigrants, urban poor and
artists created the conditions from where much of Vancouver’s early cultural life grew.
Beginning in the 1990’s, Mount Pleasant’s gentrification started to take hold, first through
the live/work studio condos that gradually began to appear in the area. Beginning in
2010, with the development in the Olympic Village area, serious gentrification began,
with many residents evicted from their long-held homes as rents doubled and tripled
within a few years. Suddenly the things that held Mount Pleasant back seemed to be its
new selling points—like its arts community and old heritage buildings—although
ironically both became early targets in the process. Suddenly Mount Pleasant
transformed from one of Vancouver’s cheapest neighbourhood to one of its most
expensive, becoming ground zero for the increasingly unaffordability of the city.
Our first call for submissions welcomes contributions from community members as we
begin the process of building a program that reflects, engages with and enriches this
complex cultural history.

Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen to launch in fall of 2018!

grunt gallery has been given the reins to program content on a new non-commercial urban screen in Mount Pleasant. The urban screen is being constructed on the second floor of the Rize building on the western side of Kingsway Avenue facing the street. Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen will launch in fall of 2018.

Our vision is to provide an urban screen that allows the viewer to interact in various ways with the content in contrast to the advertising/ consumer paradigm that is the rule with most highly visible screens in a public space. grunt has commissioned Métis filmmaker, Amanda Strong, to produce an original work for the urban screen. Her movie, Ghosts, is a stop-motion animated video work that will be featured on the screen for a 12-month period in rotation with other art community programming. grunt’s first community program, PLACE, will showcase artwork about the neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant and surrounding areas by local artists. As well, it will exhibit a number of community archives.

We’re also happy to announce that CREATIVE BC – INTERACTIVE FUND is funding the interactive features on the Screen including an external camera, streaming audio and SMS capabilities!

SIGN UP FOR FREE URBAN SCREEN DIGITAL STORYTELLING WORKSHOPS

Become a part of the urban screen project. This spring, grunt gallery and EastVan Digital Stories join forces to work with Mount Pleasant residents who want to create short videos. Artists Lorna Boschman and Sebnem Ozpeta will host a series of six free weekly workshops at the gallery. The theme is Location. Create a digital story during the workshop by combining images, audio and/or video. We share technical fundamentals but, more importantly, through our group process you will be able to share your own authentic story. Selected videos from the workshops will be shown on grunt gallery’sMount Pleasant Community Art Screen and on digitalstories.ca. As works for the MPCAS will not have sound, captions will replace audio. Videos shown on digitalstories.ca will have full audio and video and will have closed captions to make the work more accessible.
To sign up for a workshop, send an email to Lorna Boschman lorna@digitalstories.ca. A maximum of four people can register per weekly workshop. We expect these workshops to fill up quickly. Please send in ASAP and please include your name, email address, phone/text number, and whether you live in Mount Pleasant.ARTISTS: Lorna Boschman & Sebnem OzpetaWHERE:grunt gallery, #116 – 350 East 2 AvenueDATES: (12 – 4 PM each day) April 14 – June 10 are filled up currently if you would like to sign up for the waiting list please contact Lorna Boschman by emailing lorna@digitalstories.ca